Clay Pricing 2026: Every Plan, Compared

A built-in database plus sequencing at a third of Starter's price. It gives you contacts out of the box rather than a programmable enrichment layer — the cheaper choice unless you specifically need custom signals Clay can compose.

Sending infrastructure with a lead database attached, materially cheaper if outreach volume rather than data sophistication is the constraint. Pairs with Clay as often as it replaces it.

Focused email finding and verification with strong hit rates. If the only Clay column you truly needed was a verified email, this does that one job at a fraction of the credit cost.

Below roughly 300 leads a month, buying credits directly from a single enrichment provider and pasting into a sheet costs less than any Clay plan. You lose the waterfall coverage — which is exactly what you are deciding whether to pay for.

How much does Clay cost per month?

Clay Starter is about $149/month billed monthly or roughly $134/month annually with around 2,000 credits. Explorer is about $349/month monthly or roughly $314/month annually with around 10,000 credits, and Pro runs around $800/month with roughly 50,000 credits. Enterprise is custom-quoted, and there is a free plan with a one-time grant of about 100 credits.

How do Clay credits work?

A credit buys one enrichment attempt against one field from one provider — not one lead. A row with four enrichment columns costs at least four credits, and a multi-provider waterfall spends a credit for every provider it tries before one succeeds. Failed lookups generally still consume the attempt.

Is Clay free?

There is a free plan with roughly 100 credits granted once, not monthly, and no credit card required. That is enough to build one real table and measure coverage on about fifty accounts, which is the right evaluation: if your test table returns good coverage on the fields you need, scale works; if it does not, a bigger plan will not fix it.

Why is my Clay bill higher than expected?

Almost always one of two things: enrichment columns multiplying per row, or Claygent running unconditionally across a large table. Claygent costs far more per run than a standard lookup. The fix is conditional runs — order columns cheapest-first and only enrich rows that pass an earlier filter, which routinely halves credit spend on the same list.

Is Clay worth it compared to Apollo?

Apollo is roughly a third of the price and gives you a contact database and sequencing immediately. Clay is a programmable enrichment layer that composes many providers, which wins when your targeting depends on custom signals no single database holds. If your ICP is definable by standard firmographics, Apollo is the cheaper and faster answer.

Should I buy Clay annually?

Not in month one. Annual saves roughly 10%, but teams typically cut credit consumption by half in the first two months by reordering columns and adding conditional runs. Run monthly for two months, optimize, measure steady-state burn, then commit annually to the tier that fits the optimized number — often one tier below where you started.